God’s Arbiters, by Susan K. Harris

Once upon a time, there was a large, wealthy and powerful country that wanted to help a smaller, struggling, powerless country find a pathway into a more stable, democratic, freedom-loving and civilized future. The powerful nation believed that its ways were enlightened and progressive, motivated by the blessings and wisdom of Christendom; it considered the ways of the smaller nation superstitious, backward, unstable and violent.

Meanwhile, in smoky rooms removed from public inspection, certain wealthy leaders of industry pursued their own secret agendas—mainly the opening up of markets for expanding capitalist interests and the plundering of rich natural resources hidden away in the hinterlands of the much less technologically savvy nation, which they aimed to occupy and plunder. All these manipulations, of course, were masked by the propaganda of moral duty and "benevolent assimilation," terms much exploited at the time.